What is NRC and CAB or CAA?

NRC is an official record of those who are legal Indian citizens. It

includes demographic information about all those individuals who
qualify as citizens of India as per the Citizenship Act, 1955. The
register was first prepared after the 1951 Census of India. The 1951
NRC list has been updated for Assam, which has had a longstanding
foreigner problem, to remove out illegal migrants and save further
inflow.3 The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) allows Hindus,
Christians and other religious minorities who are in India as
undocumented migrants to become citizens if they can show they
were persecuted because of their religion in Muslim-majority
Bangladesh, Pakistan or Afghanistan. They are considered as refugee
and treated as secondary citizens in India.

Who are the Aliens?

Where have all the foreigners gone? That is the question most people
and political groups in the state are asking after only 19 lakh people
were excluded from the final NRC released. They are a group of
people who reside in India illegally. The Assam Public Works (APW),
whose petition in the Supreme Court led to the beginning of the NRC
updation exercise six years ago, had said there were at least 41 lakh
foreigners in Assam and their names must be deleted from poll rolls.
The number of NRC rejects is far lower than earlier claims about the
number of foreigners in Assam made by leaders such as Union home
minister Amit Shah (40 lakh), Union minister Kiren Rijiju (2 crore, in
the entire country), ex-Union minister Sriprakash Jaiswal (50 lakh in
2004), ex-Union home minister Indrajit Gupta (40 lakh in 1997) and
Assam ex-CM Hiteswar Saikia (30 lakh in 1992).

Residents
(1) An individual is said to be resident in India in any previous year, if
(a) He/she is in India in that year for a period or periods amounting in
all to one hundred and eighty-two days or more
(b) Having within the four years preceding that year been in India for
a period or periods amounting in all to three hundred and sixty-five
days or more, is in India for a period or periods amounting in all to
sixty days or more in that year.

Citizens
Citizenship of India can be acquired by birth, descent, registration
and naturalisation.
Indian citizenship by registration can be obtained when the applicant
is of Indian origin, or to be married to, or have parents who are,
citizens of India
. A foreigner can acquire citizenship of India by naturalisation.
Applicants must have:
• Lived in India for 11 of the last 14 years prior to application.
• Lived continuously in India for a period of 12 months immediately
prior to date of application.

Historical Development of NRC and CAB?

The history of ethnic tensions in Northeast India is a long story of
violence and ethnic cleansing of Bengalis, both Hindu and Muslim,
after the drawing of borders in 1947 turned what had been
neighbouring districts and provinces into foreign countries. The parts
of India which did not experience the Partition do not understand
what this means. The Bengali-speaking district of Sylhet in Assam
went to Pakistan in a controversial referendum in 1947. The Bengali
Hindus from there were displaced and moved to other parts of
Assam, of which province they had been a part since 1874, when the
territory had been taken out of Bengal and appended to Assam by
the colonial British administration. They found themselves
unwelcome in Assam. A large part of the subsequent history of
tensions between the Bengali and Assamese linguistic groups, and
the hostility towards Bengalis in Northeast India, resulted from the
maps drawn in 1874 and 1947.
To understand what is happening with the National Register of
Citizens and the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill today, some
knowledge of that history is essential. The events of that tumultuous
past include forced migrations not only in 1947 due to Partition but
also in 1971 following the Bangladesh Genocide in which an
estimated two-three million Bengalis, mainly Hindus, men, women,
and children, were killed by the Pakistan Army in one of the worst
massacres in world history.
The region had moved on from this very painful past and was on the
path to recovery when the NRC and Citizenship Bill came along. Now,
tensions that had subsided between communities are again high. The
Assamese and tribal groups are opposed to the Bill, despite its
exemptions for Sixth Schedule tribal areas and states covered by the
Inner Line Permit regime that require Indians from other parts of
India to apply for a special permit from the state government to
enter certain states.
Many Assamese and tribal chauvinists support the NRC, despite the
fact that it is quite clearly riddled with errors – so much so that the
Assam BJP has rejected it and the officer in charge of the exercise is
now facing FIRs – because they see it as a means of evicting
“Bangladeshis”, a term often applied to all Bengalis of East Bengal
origin, and especially to the Muslims among them. They oppose the
Citizenship Bill because they see it as a backdoor for giving citizenship
to the Hindu Bengalis, whom they also want evicted.
There is a considerable history of attempted ethnic cleansing
targeting mainly Bengalis, Nepalis and Biharis in Northeast India,
though other communities such as Marwari have also faced attacks
and been subjected to extortion at times. Some accounts of this
history can be found in a book called Insider Outsider of which I was
one of two editors. The region had seemingly moved on from those
dark days when we began work on the book, circa 2015. There was a
sense of peace and what is usually called progress, and the talk was
of things like music festivals in Shillong, fancy five stars opening in
Guwahati, and the Act East policy in the region. Those who live far
away from the region and have no clue about its realities will not be
affected by whatever happens.
They may be benefiting from the cynical politics. This is just like the
years leading up to Partition in 1947, when extremists among the
Hindus and 9 Muslims who calculated that they themselves had
nothing to lose pushed the two-nation theory. They were largely right
in their reckoning; the price of India’s freedom was paid by the one
million ordinary folks, mainly in Punjab and Bengal, who died in
Partition, and the millions more who lost their roots and became
unwanted refugees. VD Savarkar, who first proposed the two-nation
theory, and MA Jinnah, who took it forward, did not die or become
refugees.
The NRC and CAB are now reopening many old wounds. They are
doing so for no reason. The NRC as a process is impossible to execute
in a country such as India with any degree of accuracy, especially
when the cut-off date in question is from decades in the past, and
this is clear from the experience of Assam. The CAB as a Bill to give
citizenship to “persecuted minorities from Pakistan, Afghanistan and
Bangladesh” is completely unnecessary now. Had it been passed in
the 1960s or 1970s, it would have made sense. This is 2019, and the
Hindus displaced by Partition are mostly dead. Their descendants,
like the descendants of those who arrived up to 1971, are citizens.
Even those who arrived up to 2008 should have got citizenship by
now, because the period of residency required currently to obtain
citizenship is 11 years.
CAB only proposes to bring this down to six years – not to give
citizenship where none was being given. There is no information at all
about how many people will be benefited by this amendment. The
only information available so far, from the Joint Parliamentary
Committee report on CAB, suggests that the number of such people
is 31,313 individuals, mainly Hindus from Pakistan, who are living in
camps in Rajasthan, Gujarat and Delhi. However, District Magistrates
in those places are already empowered under existing laws to grant
citizenship and there is no need to mess with the basic structure of
the constitution to help those people.
They can be helped without unleashing the dangerously divisive
politics of religion and community we are now seeing across the
country, and most of all in its sensitive Northeast.8 Union Home
Minister Amit Shah made his intentions clear National Register of
Citizens (NRC) saying that it will be brought in soon.

Who are eligible to get registered in the NRC?

• Persons whose names appear in the NRC list of 1951
• Persons whose names appear in any of the Electoral Rolls up to
March 24, 1971
• Descendants of the above persons
• People who came from another region on or after January 1, 1966
but before March 25, 1971 and registered themselves with the
Foreigners Registration Regional Officer (FRRO) and were declared as
Indian citizens by the Foreigner Tribunal
• All Indian citizens including their relatives who moved to Assam
after March 24, 1971 (They need to provide proof of residence in
another part of the country as on March 24, 1971)
• D’ voters can apply for inclusion of their names in the updated NRC
(Their names will be included only when the appropriate Foreigner
Tribunal declares them as non-foreigners)
• Persons who can provide any one of the documents issued up to
midnight of March 24, 1971 as mentioned in the list of documents
admissible for citizenship
What are the benefits being registered in the NRC?
The NRC will form the basis for the detection of illegal migrants,
inclusion will protect against harassment and a ticket to enjoying all
the constitutional rights and safeguards and the benefits of
government schemes
What happens to those excluded from NRC?
The government says those who do not find their names on the final
list will be given the opportunity to prove their citizenship first in
quasi-judicial courts - known as Foreign Tribunals (FT) - and
subsequently in higher courts.
Those excluded would not be considered foreigners until they
exhaust all their legal options. In the case of Assam, the state
government has clarified it will not detain any individual until he/she
is declared a foreigner by the foreigners' tribunal.

Controversies of the NRC and CAA

We, the people of India" mean citizens of India. This citizen of India
is defined, identified, verified and distinguished from infiltrators
under a set of three laws: the Citizenship Act of 1955 (amended
many times; the latest version emerged in the recent Winter Session
of Parliament), the Foreigners Act of 1946 and the Passport Act of
1920. Every non-citizen living in India is an infiltrator, if she is not a
tourist or diplomat, because India doesn't have a law to define a
refugee. Tibetans, Sri Lankan Tamils and some other named groups of
foreigners are refugees as the government of the day accorded them
that status. The Foreigners Act makes it a duty of the government to
expel all infiltrators or illegal immigrants out of India. Since there is
no law, there is no accurate estimate of how many illegal immigrants
are living in India. Estimating the number of illegal immigrants is like
guessing the amount of black money in circulation in the Indian
economy -- the money exists, but it is out of official calculation and
hence subject to speculation.
The current story began with the Narendra Modi government
pushing the Citizenship Amendment Bill (now an Act) in Parliament,
which passed it on December 12. During the discussion on the
Citizenship Amendment Act, Union Home Minister Amit Shah
announced that the government would bring a nationwide NRC
(National Register of Citizens). The Assam experience has been bad
with reports about a large number of bonafide citizens having been
left out of the NRC, and there is still no clarity about how many illegal
immigrants were identified in the exercise, which essentially asked
every resident to prove her Indian citizenship.

Focus Shifts: CAA to NPR

While the row over the Citizenship Amendment Act brought
thousands of people to the streets -- with protests turning violent at
many places -- a fresh controversy erupted over the updating of the
National Population Register (NPR). The West Bengal and Kerala
governments announced suspension of NPR work. The NPR is a
register of residents of India where the enumerator collects
demographic and biometric data of individuals living at the place of
enumeration for six months or more.
Now, this turn of events where non-BJP ruled states (which are no
longer a handful) started to halt an ongoing enumeration of residents
(NPR) process left many confused, with the time to begin counting
for the Census approaching fast. Is the recently passed Citizenship
Amendment Act related to NPR? The answer is both yes and no.
There is no direct link. It depends on how the government decides to
use data collected for NPR.

NPR, NRC and a Law

Now, let's see the connection that troubles those skeptical of the
government's move. It takes us to 2004, when another Citizenship
Amendment Act had been passed the Citizenship Amendment Bill
2003 when the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government was in power. In the
amendment to the Citizenship Act of 1955, a Section 14A had been
inserted. Section 14A relates to issue of national identity cards.
According to Section 14A of the Citizenship Act, "the Central
Government may compulsorily register every citizen of India and
issue a national identity card to him." The same Section 14A of the
Citizenship Act says, "The Central Government may maintain a
National Register of Indian Citizens and for that purpose establish a
National Registration Authority."

Protests over CAA

The nationwide NRC, though announced by Union Home Minister
Amit Shah in Parliament recently, is not yet notified by the
government. Prime Minister Narendra Modi signaled a backward
step on NRC saying there was no discussion on NRC in the cabinet.
The current NPR exercise was set in motion after the Narendra Modi
government decided to update the NPR originally created after the
Census 2011. Seen in the context of the Citizenship Amendment Act
of 2003, the NPR may lead to an NRIC.
This is where the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 adds fuel to the
fire. Critics of the Modi government allege the latest amendment will
shield non-Muslim illegal immigrants while making large number of
Muslims stateless people with an uncertain future.
Huge protests in India against a citizenship law seen by many as anti-
Muslim have wrong footed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and sent
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) scrambling to douse the anger. In PM
Modi's biggest challenge since taking office in 2014, hundreds of
thousands have rallied against the law offering citizenship to
immigrants from non-Muslim minorities who have fled Afghanistan,
Bangladesh and Pakistan. At least 21 people have died in clashes with
police. It is perhaps a first in independent India's political history. The
protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), 2019 has
spread to almost every corner of the country, yet the reasons for the
protest vary with the geography.
Some are protesting because the CAA allegedly violates the secular
identity of the country while others fear that it will endanger their
linguistic and cultural identity. Yet others believe that while the CAA
itself is innocuous, combined with the proposed nationwide National
Register of Citizens (NRC), an exercise that has run into controversy in
Assam, it will become a tool to exclude the Muslim population of the
country. That the Union government has been hit hard by this
allegation is evident from the fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi
has publicly contradicted home minister Amit Shah's assertion that a
nationwide NRC will be prepared by 2024

PROTEST AND POLITICS

The connection is that a number of civil rights activists, particularly
in Bengal to begin with, started protesting the collection of
demographic and biometric data for updating NPR. They alleged that
the NPR was the first step towards the National Register of Citizens
(NRC) in Bengal. The BJP has been campaigning for NRC in Bengal
with the Mamata Banerjee government opposing it vehemently.
Bengal, by the way, is estimated to have over 1 crore illegal
immigrants, most of them crossing over from Bangladesh over
decades. Mamata Banerjee was quick to respond to the allegation,
putting the NPR process to a halt